_Sebald._ My God! Those morbid, olive, faultless shoulder-blades-- I should have known there was no blood beneath!
_Ottima._ You hate me then? You hate me then?
_Sebald._ To think She would succeed in her absurd attempt, 250 And fascinate by sinning, show herself Superior--guilt from its excess superior To innocence! That little peasant's voice Has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better, never fear, 255 Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, Nature or trick! I see what I have done, Entirely now! Oh, I am proud to feel Such torments--let the world take credit thence-- I, having done my deed, pay too its price! 260 I hate, hate--curse you! God's in his heaven!
_Ottima._ --Me! Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself--kill me! Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me--then Yourself--then--presently--first hear me speak I always meant to kill myself--wait, you! 265 Lean on my breast--not as a breast; don't love me The more because you lean on me, my own Heart's Sebald! There, there, both deaths presently!
_Sebald._ My brain is drowned now--quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift-recurring intervals, 270 A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go--whirls from a black, fiery sea!
_Ottima._ Not me--to him, O God, be merciful!
_Talk by the way, while_ PIPPA _is passing from the hillside to Orcana. Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of_ JULES, _a young French statuary, at Possagno_.
_1st Student._ Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five--who's a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be 5 suffered to hurt his bride when the jest's found out.
_2nd Student._ All here! Only our poet's away--never having much meant to be present, moonstrike him! The airs of that fellow, that Giovacchino! He was in violent love with himself, and had a fair prospect of thriving in 10 his suit, so unmolested was it--when suddenly a woman falls in love with him, too; and out of pure jealousy he takes himself off to Trieste, immortal poem and all--whereto is this prophetical epitaph appended already, as Bluphocks assures me--"_Here a mammoth-poem lies, 15 Fouled to death by butterflies._" His own fault, the simpleton! Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly.--_Æsculapius, an Epic. Catalogue of the drugs: Hebe's plaister--One strip Cools_ 20 _your lip. Phoebus's emulsion--One bottle Clears your throttle. Mercury's bolus--One box Cures--_